


Helpdesk, This Is Peridot

by BlackCatula



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Comedy, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4512315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCatula/pseuds/BlackCatula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in the fastest ship available, it's still a long, long trip out to this planet...what was it called again, "Earth"? And someone like Jasper is the last person Peridot could have wanted to end up traveling with. She's so BAD with technology! She's already made so many support calls that Peridot has just begun answering the comm system with "Helpdesk, This Is Peridot".</p><p>Gem Tech Support is a horror all its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Case #372215: Holo System Lockup

"Helpdesk, this is Peridot."

"Why do you always say that whenever you answer the telecom?" Jasper demanded, not so much furiously, but an aggressive variant of curiously. "You say that like you're one member of a whole unit."

"Sigh, what's the problem, Jasper?"

"We're the only two Gems on this entire ship, there's no point in announcing yourself as a member of some nonexistent team!"

Peridot leaned forward, palm to her forehead. "I meant why are you calling me?"

"You need to fix the Holo Simulator system," Jasper replied flatly. "Now."

"The Holo system? What's wrong with it?"

"It's broken. You need to fix it. Right now."

Peridot sighed heavily again, activating her detachable fingers to form a hovering screen in front of her. "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

"It doesn't turn off. Fix it!"

"I can't fix it if I don't know what the problem is," she grumbled, grinding her teeth. "What do you mean it doesn't turn OFF? Did you mean to say it doesn't turn ON?"

"It doesn't turn OFF!" Jasper shouted, her voice creating extra feedback. Fortunately, Peridot had the foresight to pack her custom-modded headset for this trip, and she could adjust Jasper's volume as she saw fit.

"That's weird…" she replied, tapping the screen. "Guess I'll have to come see what happened."

"Why do you need to come see?" Jasper asked, a bit suddenly. "Did you forget how to shut it off remotely?"

"I'd have already done that if I could, you stupid clod!" she wanted to say, but didn't out of fear of being smashed into a pancake.

"It's...not responding," she said instead, with a definite restraint. "I'll have to come take a look at the physical console inside the Holo Simulator."

"Why do you have to come inside it?" Jasper pressed defensively. "Isn't there an...an external access panel or something?"

"It'll be much faster if I access the console from inside," Peridot explained, pulling herself to her feet, hovering screen in tow. "I'm on my way over."

"You can't go in there!" Jasper blurted out. "...I mean, there could be electrical problems. Or broken machinery. It isn't safe to go inside, you should definitely do it from the outside."

Peridot paused in the hallway. "...what did you DO?"

"None of your business," came the grumbled reply. "Just...do your job and don't ask any questions."

She waited another moment before shaking her head and carrying on down the hall toward the Holo Simulator room. Not even two days had passed on their many-day voyage to...whatever that planet was called, and she could already tell for certain that Jasper was going to drive completely her up the wall. If she hadn't felt she'd NEEDED a powerful escort for this mission, she wouldn't even have bothered asking a meathead like her…

...this had better not turn into one of those "it's gonna be a LONG trip" things, she griped to herself.

Jasper was already standing outside the Holo Simulator door, arms crossed and expression sour. Peridot made a couple of quick taps and swipes on her screen, then rejoined her fingers to their default position, cleared her throat, and gave her a half-hearted wave.

"Yo…".

Jasper raised an eyebrow, retaining as much menace as possible. "Fix it."

Peridot tried to counter her stare with one of her own, but her escort's massive presence loomed before her, intimidating and distracting and terrifying. Her gaze fell toward Jasper's massive biceps, all at once imagining the sheer crushing force a single flex of those muscles could produce. She wisely decided to avert her gaze.

"...right. Where's that console..."

She opened a small panel beside the door, entering a few basic commands and watching to see if the program would respond. She could feel Jasper's intense gaze burning a hole in the back of her head the whole time. She clearly wasn't happy about this. What in the name of Yellow Diamond had she DONE?

"This is hopeless," she finally announced. "I need to get inside."

"YOU'RE hopeless," Jasper replied snidely.

"Do you want the Holo Simulator fixed, or not?" Peridot asked, hands on her hips. "You obviously can't fix it yourself, and I'm telling you there's no way I can fix it without physically going in there. So what's it gonna be?"

"...fine," Jasper finally responded, stepping aside but not dropping her menace for even a moment. "But I'd better not hear a single word about anything you might see in there."

"I do this for a living, Jasper," she said with a sigh. "I'm pretty sure I won't be fazed by whatever weirdo fantasy sequence you broke the Simulator with."

"NOT A WORD!" Jasper growled.

Peridot shook her head and keyed in an access code to open the Simulator doors. The system responded, albeit quite slowly, and the doors finally parted. She stepped inside, mental shields up for whatever she was about to see.

Of all the things she had expected, this had not been one of them.

She was standing in a meticulously constructed war room, towering cobblestone walls adorned with swords, maces, axes, weapons of all shapes and sizes, from as small as her hand to three times her entire body mass. Illuminated tables were stacked high with books and maps with little colored pins stuck in them. Pictures of various Gems were hung all around, commanders and leaders and deserters and informants alike.

And there, center stage, stood a lone Gem, her afterimage flickering in the malfunctioning Simulator light. Anyone could have recognized her from that iconic tangled mass of bright pink curls...it was Rose Quartz, the Great Traitor, the Gem Renegade herself. She was slightly bent at the waist, likely in the middle of an action when the simulation froze, and her expression was a bit somber, but still firm and resolute. In her hands she held the breastplate from a mighty suit of armor stood up beside her, and, Peridot noted with some dismay, she was otherwise undressed to the undergarments.

Ahh, so that was it…

"It's for research," Jasper said, very suddenly right behind her.

"Gyah!" Peridot shouted, turning around and stumbling backwards, falling right through the simulated image of Rose. "Don't ever sneak up on me like that!"

"I wanted to study my nemesis in greater detail," Jasper continued, ignoring her for Rose. "I needed to understand everything about her. The weapons she would choose, the combat tactics she might employ, everything right down to the way she wore her armor. So I wanted to study everything about her in as extreme a depth I could create...".

"Mhmm, of course," Peridot grumbled, pulling herself back to her feet with an exasperated sigh. She brushed herself off, activated her finger-screen, and began composing a checklist of errors as she glanced around the room. "This simulation was FAR too detailed for a Holo Simulator of this size. The room has too many individual Objects, the textures are far too dithered, and you've got the color spectrum turned up to maximum. I can't even BELIEVE the resolution on this Rose Quartz model, no wonder the system locked up. I've never seen someone use a Holo System to render a Gem's butt in such sharp detail. Thanks for leaving me with that mental image, by the way. Now where's that console…".

She watched Jasper stare distantly at the simulation a little longer as she popped open the console panel on the floor and plugged in a hard reboot command. The image sputtered and sparked, then faded away as the system's lights dimmed and eventually shut off entirely.

"There, it's fixed," Peridot said brusquely, slamming the panel shut. "Wait at least 30 minutes before you use it again."

"Good," Jasper grunted. "Now get out."

"And don't ever use that resolution again," Peridot added, harshly. "Unless you WANT to drain the ship's entire battery and strand us out here in empty space, then be my guest."

She stood up and brushed off her knees again. "Now, I have a report to log, so try not to break anything else today."

"Don't you DARE file that report!" Jasper suddenly roared, thrusting an arm out to block her and nearly knocking off her head in the process. "NO ONE can ever know about this!"

"It's protocol, Jasper!" Peridot protested. "Are you telling me to break protocol now? Didn't I JUST ask you not to break anything else today?!"

"Think of it this way…" Jasper said, pressing herself nose-to-gem-nose with her, "If you file any sort of report on this little incident, I'll smash all of your precious floating fingers and then squish your head between my enormous thighs. Am I clear?"

Peridot took half a moment to look down and verify the enormity of Jasper's thighs. It was readily apparent that a head-squishing would indeed prove fatal between monstrous tree trunks such as hers. She huffed and nodded silently.

"Good," Jasper said, returning to full height. "Now get back in your room and make sure we're still on course. The sooner we get to this miserable planet, the better."

Peridot made a nasally "snerk" sound, rolled her eyes, and shuffled back down the hall toward her station. She had some choice words floating around that she really wanted to say, but out of mortal fear of being poofed into nothingness, she swallowed them back. Maybe she'd put them somewhere else, like a private log, when Jasper wasn't looking. Maybe she'd just have to bottle them away, as she'd done with other choice words in the past.

Whatever the case, at least her worst fears had been confirmed. It WAS going to be a long trip...


	2. Case #5318008: Intermittent Connection Failures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The connection keeps mysteriously going down! What's causing it? And what's the punishment for keeping Jasper waiting...?

"Yes, Helpdesk, this is Peridot."

"Oh, so the connection IS working, then?" came Jasper's gruff response. "Then what's going on here?"

"Lots of things are going on, Jasper," Peridot replied, leaning back in her seat with a sigh. "Be specific, what particular thing is not working?"

"The connection isn't working," Jasper growled back. "I need access to the armory inventory, and I can't get to it."

"What does the error message say on your screen?" Peridot asked through clenched teeth. Expecting a detailed explanation from that meathead had clearly been too much.

"There is no error message!" she snarled. "It went away already!"

"Then try doing it again, and tell me what it says in the little box on the screen when it pops up after you press the button."

She heard a series of grunts and mumbles on the other end, interspersed with a few click-clack keyboard-pecking noises. Her lip curled at the end just the slightest at the thought of Jasper, the mighty muscle and fearsome fighter, hunched over a tiny access screen, jabbing individual keys with only two fingers in some kind of pathetic effort to interact with the data network like the lowly frail nerds did. It almost brought a sense of deserved validation to the importance of her own job, and the respect she knew deep down that she was owed for putting up with people like Jasper.

"Cannot access this file location."

...almost.

"That's all it says?"

"Yes. Fix it!"

"Well, that's wonderfully helpful," she said, tossing her hands in the air. "What a specific and thoroughly useful error message! That tells me exactly where and what the problem is, wow, why do we even need my troubleshooting expertise when all anyone would have to do is follow the instructions of that meticulously detailed error report!"

"We only need your expertise because this ship wasn't properly outfitted with a self-sustaining data system," Jasper said snidely. "Now fix it before I have you replaced with a robot or something!"

The transmission shut off with a loud static click. Peridot pitched herself forward out of her chair and on to her feet with a long groaning sigh. She yanked the headset from her ears, tossing it callously on the desk as she whipped herself around on her heel and stomped down the corridor toward the ship's central data grid room.

"Fix it before I have you replaced with a robot," she mimicked spitefully before switching to a mental voice, on the off chance Jasper was actually still somehow listening. What a joke. What a clod! You can't just replace a Gem with a robot! Robots obey their programming to a tee, they have no sense of intuition or troubleshooting. Put THEM in charge and they'd wreck the whole ship in a matter of MINUTES!

"Whoosh", she whispered, waving one hand to the side as the automatic door closed behind her silently. The doors had been specially engineered to make no sound, but she'd always felt that was somehow just...wrong, and had one day just gotten into a habit of providing the sound effects herself.

"Alright," she said, switching from mental back to audible. "Which one of you scrubs is responsible for this nonsense?"

She narrowed her eyes and made a slow, burning sweep around the room as the door closed behind her. Much like the rest of the ship, the room glowed, almost pulsed, with a vibrant green light emanating from several humming power cores in the center. Large shelved racks lined the walls, covered in tiny blinking pinpricks of red, each cabinet its own representative for some other room on the ship. The air was either clean and chilly or tight and warm, depending on where you stood, and the humming, pulsing, clicking walls formed an eerie biomechanical heartbeat.

She eyed each rack sharply, looking for any red lights that might have stopped being red. She jammed her hand behind each rack, fingers hovering, groping for any loosened data conduits. She pressed an ear to each rack, listening intently for any soft beeping sounds of distress. What she failed to notice was the tiny robonoid skittering around on the floor.

Until she tripped over it.

"Gyah! You stupid pleb, what are you doing in here?" she shouted, rubbing her head.

The robonoid, unsurprisingly, didn't respond, but instead ran full-speed forward, ramming its body into one of the central power cores. Peridot raised an eyebrow and watched as the core blinked out, then stayed dark. The robonoid, having rolled away a bit after impact, put its legs out, stood itself back up and proceeded to again rush into the power core, causing every one of its lights to flicker back on, each in turn.

Peridot's mouth wrinkled and curled in funny ways as she watched the scene play out all over again, the core blinking out, the robonoid stumbling backward, the data link going dark, and then all over again, and again after that. And the next time it rushed forward, it crashed headlong into the awaiting Peridot's finger that now stood in its path. There was a "bop" sound, then it tumbled back yet again before picking itself up and trying again.

"YOU'RE the cause of all these shenanigans?" she accused as the robonoid rammed forward. "Just you?"

She watched it carry on with a mildly irritated but oddly fascinated fixation. "Just one little renegade pest, operating on sheer, stubborn programming, laughably unaware of its own faulty guidance correction system! Blindly trying to carry out its business without a single thought to its own consequences…".

She ran that sentence through her head again, glanced back down at the robonoid, still trying to headbutt her finger, then stared blankly at the wall for a minute. She snorted. Then she snickered. Then she started cackling uncontrollably.

"You're so DENSE and HELPLESS!" she mocked, flicking the robonoid across the floor. "You don't even know where you're going, and you don't even CARE, ha ha ha!"

She wiped a tear from beneath her glasses as she regained her composure. The robonoid was resetting itself up, ready to continue its fruitless dash forward, never once taking a moment to process the idea of changing its course. It only knew there was a task to execute, and would spare no CPU cycle for any other purpose. Peridot took a seat on the floor to continue her torment.

"And why WOULD you care, anyway?" she continued, thrusting her finger into its ball body like a pool cue. "You only do what you're told to do, never questioning your assignment, never second-guessing your superiors…what a life!"

"Not that my own life is any better…" she added, turning sour as she sent her detachable fingers into floating console mode. "A no-life life of blissful ignorance doesn't sound so bad when you've got a clod like Jasper in charge…".

She sighed and tapped the screen a few times, sending out a localized energy signal to scan for additional rogue robots. No response, only this single, lone marble, trying without fail and failing with each try to move in whatever straight line it thought it was traveling in.

"Do you even know how much trouble you're about to cause me?" she added, snatching it up with her free hand and bringing it up to her disapproving face. "Because of your stupid flawed programming, now I'm going to have to report to that hulking lunkhead that one of the robots was responsible for this mess!"

The tiny machine squirmed beneath her grip, trying in vain to get back on its feet.

"That means she'll say it was all MY fault!" she shouted down at it. "She'll blame all of YOUR errors and YOUR failures on ME, and my inability to reset your programming correctly! Don't you get it?! You're ruining EVERYTHING, you miserable turquoise marble!"

She growled and recalled her other fingers, squeezing the robonoid tighter. "It's a good thing I know how to deal with failures, then, isn't it?"

Peridot rose to her feet and held the bot out at arm's length, watching its stumpy legs flail helplessly within her unrelenting grasp. Her free arm pulled back, bringing her hand up to chin level as her fingers folded forward into arm cannon formation. She tilted her head to line up the shot, charged up, and inhaled slowly.

"Terminating program..."

...but she paused. Something was wrong. She stared at the robonoid, still struggling in her hand. No, that wasn't it. There was a noise. A rhythmic noise. Getting louder. Footsteps...?

...Jasper.

"...hhhaaAAH!" she uttered, in no minor capacity of impending panic. "Perfect timing, of course! She's here to ruin everything, just like always...rrragh!"

She powered down the cannon and glanced back and forth for a place to hide.

There!

Cupping the robot between both hands, she dove behind the nearest rack, her spine jolting at the sudden onslaught of hot air blasting against her back. There wasn't much room to fold and contort if she wanted to peek through the rack's shelves behind her, but she decided to try anyway.

She could see Jasper's massive shadow blocking the doorway, the green lights reflecting in strange patterns against her nose-set gem. Over the hum and drone of the data cores she could hear indiscrete heavy muttering. What did she just say? She swear she'd heard "crush her into dust", but the room was too dim to read her lips.

She imagined herself taking a deep breath - she didn't dare breathe out loud right now, even hidden among the constant noise of the data room, Jasper's hunting instinct was just too keen to risk it - and she told herself that everything would be fine so long as she didn't move a muscle. Or make a sound. Or let the robot go. Or blink her eyes. Or--

Wait.

...the robot?!

She could see it skittering along across the floor again, up to its old one-trick routine. When had it jumped out of her hands? She opened her mouth to scream, barely remembering in time what the end result of that action would be. Instead she watched in silent, open-mouth horror, wondering why Jasper hadn't noticed the timid tip-tapping of tiny robonoid feet yet. She could almost FEEL the fury radiating off of her though, an almost visible quivering aura in the air around her.

Jasper gave one final grunt smashed her fist against the wall, leaving a sizeable dent in the nearby rack. She turned to leave, but stopped upon noticing what Peridot had been silently screaming for her not to notice. The lone robonoid, alerted to the presence of physical damage in the immediate vicinity, quickly scampered across the data room floor, climbing the side of the rack and producing a pastel paste with which to repair the dent.

The frown on Jasper's face spread into a furious grimace. "You ARE in here, aren't you?" she rasped, deep and intimidating. "Why aren't you fixing what I instructed you to fix?"

Peridot remained absolutely paralyzed, eyes firmly fixed on Jasper's evil smile.

"I won't tolerate laziness or insubordinance," she continued, taking another step into the room, "If I find you in here, and you're doing anything other than fixing my connection issue, I WILL crush you into dust!"

Score one for Peridot, she added mentally.

"You'd be smart to give yourself up quietly" Jasper added, her scowl slowly morphing into a twisted smile. "...or should I sniff you out myself, nice and slow?"

Every joint in Peridot's body went as tense as mechanical compression would allow. Her throat pinched together so that no air could possibly escape and give away her position. She didn't even blink. She wouldn't even think. She wouldn't even press her foot too hard against the wall and slip, making a loud scraping sound.

But she accidentally did anyway.

In the shortest flash of a hot instant, Peridot felt the rack give way behind her as she collapsed to the floor, looking straight up into the menacing eyes of her imminent doom. Jasper's warped smile slowly devolved back into her usual surly scowl.

"Tell me what in the name of Yellow Diamond you were doing back there," she growled through clenched teeth, hand clasped tightly around Peridot's throat. "And you'd better tell me it was 'fixing the broken data connection' like I told you to, unless of course you WANT me to snap you in half...".

"I WAS fixing it, Jasper!" Peridot retorted, kicking her legs ineffectually. "That little scrub of a robot was the one causing the issue! Stop hindering me and let me get back to my job!"

"So it WAS your fault after all?" Jasper snarled. "Pathetic!"

"I just told you, it was the ROBONOID'S fault, not mine!" came the reply, despite the fact that - as she'd already predicted - there was simply no way Jasper would even consider blaming anyone but her at this point.

"I won't tolerate having my work delayed again," Jasper threatened, bringing her face in so close that her hot breath washed over Peridot's face when she spoke. "Robots are YOUR responsibility. A defective robot means a defective YOU. So own up to your failures and fix this ship, before I break you completely!"

"You won't break me," Peridot spat back, still struggling. "I'm the only one keeping this ship functional, and you know it! You wouldn't last a day without me!"

"Try me again and I'll HAVE TO last a day without you," Jasper said, expression melting back into her horrible slasher smile. She snatched up an arm with her free hand and placed Peridot's fingers inside her mouth. "One more word, and I bite your fingers CLEAN OFF!"

Several different reactions were vying for command of Peridot's face, including disgust, sheer terror, skepticism, and just a touch of excitement. Her hand twitched in anticipation.

"...so go on then!" she goaded, faking her confidence. "I only use these fingers to interface with every single component of the ship. You snap these babies, you can say goodbye to ever getting anything fixed around here ever again!"

A moment of thick silence hovered between them. Silence, that is, except for the hum of the data cores, the small squishing sounds of the robonoid at work, and, of course, the loud droning sound of the racks blowing out their hot air all around them. Jasper's gaze pierced hard and deep as she idly rolled one finger between two rows of teeth. Peridot refused to break her stare, if only now out of sheer stubbornness than any measure of actual courage.

Finally, Jasper relented, spitting out the fingers before releasing her grip and dropping Peridot unceremoniously to the ground in a heap.

"...ehehahaha…" Peridot sputtered as she pulled herself up on one elbow. "I knew you wouldn't do it. I called your bluff! You need me around and you know it!"

Jasper didn't respond, but turned her back on Peridot.

"Can't even speak, huh?" she chided, shaking the saliva off her fingers. "I must've outsmarted you good! Maybe now you'll think twice before...uhhhh…???"

She watched as Jasper widened her stance, her hands balling up into fists as her legs spread farther apart.

"What are you…? Oh no…".

Her muscles clenched tightly.

"No, NO! JASPER, DON'T YOU DARE!"

The last thing she saw before shutting her eyes was Jasper's meaty and muscle-bound frame hurtling toward her, the two prominent muscles located just above the back of her thighs looming large as they collided with Peridot...well, head-first.

But the worst part, she'd later add to her personal log, was that the physical damage hadn't been enough to poof her into dust, as Jasper had previously advertised, and as a result she had been forced to endure several minutes of crushing humiliation, courtesy of Jasper's incredibly ripped glutes.


	3. Case #530453080: Wifi Password

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, you can't have the wifi password! Who ARE you, anyway?

"Helpdesk, this is Peridot," she didn't say as the communication line continued beeping at her. She was in no mood to deal with yet another ridiculous Jasper call today, and there was no way she was going to endure the pain of picking up that headset. She turned her chair away and resumed making tally marks on her hover screen.

A few moments later, the line rang again, seemingly louder than before. Peridot ground her teeth together and plugged two spare fingers in her ears, continuing her adjustments. With the right mathematical tweaks, she knew she could reconfigure the energy in more manageable--

The ringing wouldn't stop. It became a shrill siren noise demanding to be acknowledged, like a spoiled child in a toy store. Peridot finally growled and flung herself back over to the desk, where she picked up the line, held a finger to her throat, and said in a fuzzy, modulated voice, "H-lpde-k th-s -s Per-do-".

She then laid the line down on her desk and rolled away again, leaving the receiver to its self. She swore she could hear a tiny voice on the other end, but chose to ignore it anyway, carrying on with her self-calibrations.

If that rotten lump thinks I'm going to be more responsive the longer she spams the comm system, she's got another thing coming, Peridot muttered to herself. I'm nobody's servant! I have much more important things to do than restructure the user interface so it sorts by officer rank instead of alphabetical name! She couldn't have broken anything else in such a short time span, could she? Heh, don't answer that…

The line had definitely gone dead by that point, and so Peridot returned it to its hook. She could already imagine the line ringing again immediately after this, and then imagined herself ripping the entire communication relay out of the wall with her bare hands. How satisfying it would be…

When she turned around again, she saw she was no longer alone.

"Ghgk!" Her hands went into defensive mode, then slowly lowered again. "...oh, it's just YOU. I'd forgotten you were even on this ship with us...".

"Sorry, I didn't mean to walk in on you," Lapis Lazuli replied, grabbing one arm. "I think the communication system might have broken?"

"What? That was YOU calling me?"

"...yes? I need something."

"The comm isn't broken," Peridot continued with a wave of all five fingers. "I just thought it was old dirt-for-brains calling again, for the umpteenth time...".

"Oh...right…" Lapis said, casting her eyes down to the floor. "Well, I'M the one who came to ask for something this time."

"She sent you to do her dirty work?" came the snide reply. "What a poser!"

"No! I'M the one who wants something!" Lapis insisted.

Peridot paused, turned to face her, and finally lowered the screen to make eye contact. "...what could YOU want?"

Lapis bit her lip, and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. "I know I'm only traveling with you as an...aide, but I wanted to ask--".

"An AIDE?" Peridot interrupted with a snort. "You're here as a PRISONER! Did you miss the memo or something?"

"I need access to a terminal!"

There was a pause as Peridot stared back at her, eyes slowly narrowing into a grim sneer. "...you want what?"

"Need," Lapis replied, staunchly. "I need you to set me up with access to a terminal. Just for a minute!"

She stood firm as Peridot rose to her feet, not taking her glare off Lapis for a moment. Her hands had already curled up into fists and were starting to tremble, but she knew she couldn't allow herself to be intimidated over this.

"Maybe you didn't hear me before," Peridot said, low and slow. "You're here on this ship as a prisoner. What makes you think I'm going to give full terminal access to a prisoner?!"

"I don't need full access!" she half-shouted. "...just enough that I can send a message out to someone."

"To who?" Peridot asked suspiciously. "...I mean 'whom'?"

Lapis could feel the heat of her stare burning through whatever armor she thought she had steeled her nerves with, and finally broke her gaze, looking down at the floor again. "...can't you just tell me the wireless password? I know what I need to do, it'll only take a minute. You can even change it again after I'm done. I just need it for a minute…".

She turned her head again to risk a look back into Peridot's unfazed expression.

"No."

"Why not?!" she cried, stomping her foot. "What difference is it going to make to you if I use a single terminal for just one minute?"

"I don't know what you're capable of!" Peridot retorted, pointing a finger at her. "What makes you think I'm going to just trust a prisoner?"

"I swear, I just need to send a message! That's all!"

"Oh, 'that's all', huh?" she said, mockingly. "Don't think you can put one past me! A single line of code injected into a message could easily take down this whole ship, leaving us stranded out here in the vast nothingness of space!"

"...code?!" Lapis asked, throwing her hands in the air. "I don't know how to code anything! I just wanted to send a video message!"

"A likely story," Peridot muttered, arms crossed. "Request denied!"

"But you haven't given me a reason WHY!" she persisted, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Why are you suddenly so afraid of me? What makes you think I WANT to strand us out here in the middle of space? What makes you think I WANT to even go back to this planet at all?"

"Get your stubs off of me!" she hissed, shaking Lapis' hands off. "I don't care about what you want. This isn't about you!"

Lapis stood there for a moment, staring back at her in confusion. "...then who IS it about?"

Peridot ground her teeth together, her hands balling up at her sides. "...Jasper."

Another moment of silence. "...Jasper? What about her?"

"If she ever found out I gave you access to a terminal, even for something as paltry as a video message, she'd probably kill me on sight!" Peridot explained with a heavy sigh. "Or at least snap my neck with whichever muscles she hasn't already used to humiliate me with...".

"Then...just don't let her find out!" Lapis pleaded. "I'll even help you hide the evidence!"

"I don't need your help!" she shot back, eyes narrowed again. "And you're not getting mine! I don't care how simple it is, I don't even care who in creation you could possibly want to send a message to! It's just not worth risking a confrontation with someone who probably eats Gems for breakfast!"

It was Lapis' turn to be angry. She could feel the fury welling up inside her, churning in her stomach and burning a hole up into her heart, setting her metaphorical blood to boil. But she knew unleashing the pent-up rage now would only make Peridot even more stubborn. She exhaled and swallowed back the anger, perhaps to save it for another day.

"...I guess I can't blame you," she finally said, turning away. "Jasper is pretty terrifying."

"Terrifying?" Peridot scoffed. "I'm not...scared of her! She just infuriates me to no end, with her constant complaining and her incessant self-importance! She thinks everything is ultimately about herself!"

Lapis didn't respond, but kept listening. Maybe there was a crack in the armor after all…

"Always calling me up over every little issue, forcing me to drop everything I'm working on to immediately fix whatever inane problem she's gotten herself into…" she carried on, now pacing around and muttering half to herself. "She expects me to respond to every garbage request she can come up with, under threat of physical or mental harm! Rrgh!"

"...you really hate your job, don't you?" Lapis asked softy.

"What?" she said, stopping just long enough to pull herself back into cohesive thought before ranting again. "No, I like my job, it's HER that I hate! This job would be loads better without her...imagine how much I could get done around here if I wasn't always stuck catering to that thick-headed clod and her every pathetic issue!"

"And the worst thing?" she continued, resuming her pacing, "Nothing I do is ever good enough for her! I get no reward for it, no compensation, not even a crummy 'thank you'! My job isn't worth the robonoid goop she scrapes off her boot after stepping all over them! Stepping all over me!"

"I'm sorry you have to put up with all that…" Lapis said, grabbing one arm again as she gazed at the floor. "I didn't even realize...but you wanna know something weird?"

Peridot stopped muttering to herself long enough to shoot her a glance. "What?"

"...maybe we're not as different as I thought we were."

The words floated lightly in the air between them as Peridot took a moment to process their meaning. Her lips moved up and down, repeating the phrase silently. Then her brow furrowed and her eyes shot back toward Lapis.

"...explain."

"I mean, we're BOTH prisoners on this ship, if you think about it," Lapis replied, gesturing with her hands. "I may be the literal prisoner, but you're trapped too. Trapped by a cruel dictator who won't let you be yourself, who forces you to work under her ideals and expects you to obey her orders or be crushed. Doesn't that sound like imprisonment to you?"

The frown remained, but Peridot's eyes were no longer focused on the conversation. Her mind was elsewhere now. A perfect opportunity...

"Trust me," she continued, taking a step forward. "I know what imprisonment looks like. And what it feels like. I understand what you're going through right now. It's hard, when you're just doing your best to do what you love, and nobody else can see that."

She could see pain and frustration twisting their way into Peridot's expression, her teeth clenched and her fingers curling tightly. She looked as though any second now she'd either start crying or possibly explode.

"I get it, Peridot," said Lapis, calmly as the receding tide. "You're only looking out for yourself, trying to do what you love without getting punished for it in the process…".

She reached out her hand, hesitated, then took hold of Peridot's. She received a sharp glare, but no protest.

"Please understand, that's what I'm trying to do too…I need to send a message to the people I love, and I just want to do it without getting punished for it. Can you help me?"

Peridot stared back at her for several seconds (...minutes? hours?), her expression unclear...was it anger she'd been feeling? Anger over this pathetic sob story of a Gem that kept persisting, even after she'd told her no?

No, maybe it was only more anger directed at Jasper, who always threatened to destroy her at the merest blink of insubordination. Maybe she was still just angry that she had no freedom to do as she wanted to, and this pathetic sob story of a Gem was just another reminder of that missing privilege.

...maybe this sob story of a Gem was right after all. Maybe all she really DID understand her struggle. Maybe…

She inhaled again, expression still torn as she turned back to Lapis and finally responded.

"I can't unlock the terminal for you."

All of the hope immediately drained from Lapis' face as Peridot released her hand and slowly walked back to her own terminal. She remained there, watching helplessly as the hovering fingers formed a holo screen again.

"Peridot…".

"I can't…" she replied, whipping her head around as she tapped the keys harder than necessary.

"Unloooooock…" the word stretched as she locked eyes with Lapis.

"The terminal..." she jabbed a single finger into the keypad, motioning with her eyes to the other station that had just lit up.

Two and two added together, and Lapis came back to life immediately. "...th-thank you, Peridot!"

"Just hurry up…" she replied, her back to Lapis as she returned to her usual ship-monitoring duties. She wouldn't allow herself to turn around, she couldn't allow herself to be seen. Not when she was...showing emotion. It was all she could do to hold back the--

Everything in the known galaxy stopped for a moment as the gentle feeling of embrace surrounded her. Her spine went stiff as she felt Lapis' arms encircle her chest, and her face bury softly into her back. It only lasted for a moment, but even when she released, the sensation remained, a strange humming inside her body. The tears refused to stay contained, she couldn't even blink them back now.

"Just great," she muttered to herself, waiting for the patter of Lapis' footsteps before daring to wipe them away. "This had better not be what having a crush feels like...".

Further away, just out of earshot if she kept her voice low, Lapis opened up the terminal and got to work. The Gem technology had changed radically since she'd last used it, but once she dipped her hands into the data stream, she found the interface very user-friendly and easy to manipulate. She took a moment to glance back at Peridot, still standing hunched at her post, typing furiously. Maybe everything would be okay after all…

She took a deep breath, then began recording.

"Steven, I hope you're able to hear this…".


End file.
